updated 07:28 am EDT, Fri April 25, 2014

Strong Microsoft results lower than last quarter, up year-on-year

Microsoft received revenues of $20.40 billion for the quarter ended March 31st, the company has revealed in its first quarterly results partially under the stewardship of new CEO Satya Nadella. Down from the previous quarter's $24.52 billion, revenues are still up from the $18.83 billion it achieved in the same period last year, and is extremely close to what financial analysts and investors expected to occur.

In comparison to the previous quarter, the Gross margin, operating income, net income, and diluted earnings per share in the quarter dipped slightly, to $14.46 billion, $6.97 billion, $5.66 billion, and $0.68 per share respectively.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella

Devices and Consumer revenue grew 12 percent to $8.30 billion. Windows OEM revenue grew 4 percent, thanks to a 19-percent growth in Windows OEM Pro revenue, with Surface revenue growing 50 percent to approximately $500 million. User figures for Office 365 Home rose by close to 1 million subscribers in a three-month period, now resting at 4.4 million, while a total of 2 million Xbox consoles were sold, 1.2 million of which were the Xbox One.

"This quarter's results demonstrate the strength of our business, as well as the opportunities we see in a mobile-first, cloud-first world," said Nadella as part of the results report. "We are making good progress in our consumer services like Bing and Office 365 Home, and our commercial customers continue to embrace our cloud solutions."

The results today will most likely be a benchmark for the company, both for evaluating Nadella's performance as a CEO in the quarters to come, but also as the last quarterly financial results before the inclusion of Nokia's Devices and Services business, as the acquisition comes to a close.